Major retail chain that had 2,500 locations at its peak nears extinction after another store closure & bankruptcy fears

FEARS of a bankruptcy filing have been looming for a now near-extinct retailer after another store closure.

K-Mart was once one of the most widespread store chains in the United States.

The brand began its first operations as the K-Mart discount store in 1962 in Garden City, Michigan, about 17 miles west of Detroit, per Transformco, the outlet store corporation that owns K-Mart after it purchased Sears Holdings in 2019.

After opening 17 more locations the same year, the company obtained over $480million in revenue.

K-Mart grew rapidly over the 1960s and continued to expand into the 1990s and early 2000s, becoming famous for its Blue Light sales.

It soon became the second-largest retailer in the United States during 1994, with about 2,500 store locations nationwide, per Boston, Massachusetts’ WXKS.

Even with the expansion over several decades, in 2003, the company filed for Chapter 11 and restructured.

K-Mart was never quite the same after that — the retailer’s store numbers collapsed considerably by 2023, and it’s approaching extinction with the announcement of another closing by the end of September.

The famed discount store reportedly filed a notice with the New Jersey Labor Department that it would be laying off all of its employees at its third-last US location in Westwood, about 28 miles north of Newark, by October 29.

The filing also noted that the store would officially close by September 30, according to WXKS.

With the closure, only two K-Marts will remain active in the United States.

Miami, Florida, has one, and Binghamton, New York, holds the other.

It’s unclear how long either location will hang on given the impending closure of the New Jersey K-Mart, and it’s possible another bankruptcy filing is in the discount chain’s future.

With the two United States locations, a total of eight K-Marts will remain in the world.

There are six others spread out across Guam, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands.

Fans of the retailer will remember K-Mart’s Blue Light Specials being an incredibly popular marketing ploy in the store’s prime.

An announcement would be made to shoppers in any given K-Mart location of a major sale while a blue light flashed to indicate the limited-time opportunity, per The Street.

Most times, the sale would only last minutes.

“Attention K-Mart shoppers” was a phrase synonymous with other pop culture phenomenons like Wendy’s “Where’s the beef?” tagline.

The U.S. Sun has contacted Transformco for further comment on K-Mart’s closures.

For more related content, check out The U.S. Sun’s coverage of a legendary department store that abruptly closed a location after 50 years in business.

The U.S. Sun also has the story on the four stores that recently shuttered their doors for good as the “retail apocalypse” continues.